Tikorangi The Jury Garden

Latest posts:

1) Reviewing our mixed borders (and why the old fashioned activity of reading books can have quite an impact).
2) Iochroma grandiflorum (blue tubular trumpets non-stop for the past seven months or more).
3) Grow it yourself: rosemary
4) It has not been a good year for monarch butterflies in the garden – our garden diary from the Weekend Gardener.
5) Revisiting garden mulch options in Outdoor Classroom.

I can’t think I have ever written about maples (except maybe Acer griseum which is notable for its superb bark). Part of the reason could be that I have never got to grips with names of the cultivars we grow here. I recall Mark and I taking a tour of the British Hardy Plants Society around the garden one time. They were a knowledgeable crew but they also collected plant names as some collect autographs – it didn’t matter if they could never grow the plant in the UK. Every plant had to be recorded. Between us, Mark and I could name everything except… the irises and the maples.

At this time of the year, the maples come into their own. Some have lovely autumn colour. Most have a lovely form which comes into sharp relief as the foliage colours and falls. They are pretty in fresh growth in spring, and fit in very well over summer (as long as they are well sheltered from wind), but it is the bare form that I like the most. They clean up very well with a little pruning and grooming to make excellent skeletons in winter.

Monarch butterfly on Dichroa versicolour

1) Garden diary – in praise of cheering pink sasanquas and being grateful for living in a mild climate.
2) Step by step instructions on how to prune raspberries – Outdoor Classroom revisited.
3) Passing the sniff test – fragrant and scented plants.
4) Metasequoia glyptostroboides Such a difficult name for a magnificent tree. It is no wonder it is oft referred to as the dawn redwood (a living fossil).
5) Grow it Yourself – cape gooseberries or, more correctly, Physalis peruviana.
6) Nothing to do with gardening, but there are new reviews on my book site (http://www.runningfurs.com) including three cookbooks – Jax Cooks, Dulcie May Kitchen and Nadia’s Kitchen – and assorted children’s picture books including a couple of exceptionally good ones.

I have an admission to make – the monarch butterfly was in fact dead. They’re easier to photograph that way and we have an alarmingly low number of live monarchs this year (blame the wet and cold summer – more on that topic later). There were not enough fluttering around for me to snap with the camera. In fact we still have an abundance of swan plants which are now interplanted with stinging nettle. Why stinging nettle? Because we are besotted with butterflies and we won’t get the beautiful red and yellow admirals in the garden unless we have their host food which, unfortunately, is stinging nettle.

Autumn crocus – real ones

Latest posts:
1) An example of really bad naming (from a PR point of view) – Vireya rhododendron “Satan’s Gift” in Plant Collector this week.

2) Stop moaning – the weather here is not at all bad, even in the depths of winter (comparatively speaking). At least we don’t need to wrap our echiums up in individual sleeping bags.

3) Grow it yourself this week is on pumpkins (if you have the space).

4) Episode two of the serialised history of the Jury plants, as published in the RHS Yearbook for the rhododendron, camellia and magnolia group. It is on the vireyas this year (it was rhododendrons last year and will be camellias next year).

5) A slightly aggrieved post on naked ladies, autumn crocus and so-called autumn crocus (colchicums and sternbergia) and why sternbergia are no more accurately called autumn crocus than colchicums…. (We aim for accuracy here).

What can I say? One of life's more unusual experiences this week. Anda Union.

Is that a Mongolian by my washing line? Why yes, actually, he is.

Latest Posts:

1) Araucaria heterophylla commonly known as Norfolk Island Pine. All I want to do is to put a Christmas star on top each time I see one of these handsome landscape trees.

2) Grow it Yourself Fruit and Nuts by Andrew Steens – the latest offering in the New Zealand garden books market.

3) It’s a plant product so it must be natural and safe, right? Think again. Maybe natural, hardly safe Abbie’s column.

4) Onions. Are they worth the effort to grow?

Tikorangi Notes: Friday March 16, 2012

Each year at this time, New Plymouth hosts Womad, a remarkable event which brings a host of interesting world music performers and musicians to the area. This week we had the delight of hosting Anda Union in the garden giving a special performance for Tikorangi locals, including the two senior classes from the local primary school. These Mongolian performers keep the ancient music of their tribal homelands alive and this includes fascinating throat singing. It is like nothing else, really.

The whole experience was made more memorable because as soon as the musicians arrived, it was clear they wanted to see the garden. I took them on the short tour of the top garden (lunch, hosted by Todd Energy was awaiting them, to be followed by the performance). Their pleasure in seeing the garden was a delight, even if there were some language barriers.

The school children arrived a little early, while the adults were still eating. One of their teachers asked if they could also have a look in the garden so I headed off with them. They were entranced by the magical feel under the rimus (and some of the kids could even identify the trees). When we came to the path down to the park, these bright buttons of 8 to 10 year olds shrieked with delight and sprinted down the hill to play jumping games across the stream. We could have spent a great deal longer looking at different things. Glenys the Gecko was sunbathing on her tree and while it was possible to show her to a few children, pressures of time meant we had to head back to the marquee for Anda Union’s performance.

All this, and it was my birthday too. Mark, naturally, took credit for organising it all for my birthday, even down to the delicious lunch.

Anda Union - bringing the music of bygone Mongolia to Tikorangi.

Summer and Mark's vegetable garden is taking on its meadow garden alter ego as he grows food for the butterflies

Latest posts:

1) For us, the flowers of summer are lilies but you need to grow a range of different species to get them performing through the season.

2) Lepidozamia peroffskyana in Plant Collector this week – including how a Russian benefactor came to have an Australian plant named after him.

3) Grow your own garlic and keep vampires at bay. This piece also suggests that the conventional wisdom of planting on the shortest day and harvesting on the longest day may not always be the best advice.

4) Quite possibly the last in the short lived garden diary series done for the Weekend Gardener (unless a miracle happens and the magazine rises like a phoenix from the ashes of liquidation.

Tikorangi notes: Friday 24 February, 2012:

Summer came for three days this week. It was warm enough to entice me into the swimming pool where I looked up at the trees silhouetted against our blue, blue skies and reached for the camera as soon as I got out. I never tire of trees and skyscapes. The elderly pines make a pretty amazing sight even if the one leaning to the right is indeed leaning as much as it appears in the photograph below. One day it may lean beyond the point of balance.

Sadly there is no doubt that a full-on summer is simply not going to happen this year. Yesterday had the unmistakeable hint of autumn. Mark is bringing in grapes every day and muttering about how we had better eat the grapes before the melon harvest starts. Eighty something rock melons, he tells me there are ripening away out in his melon patch. He will have counted them. In the meantime we will not admit defeat and we will eat our way through the grapes. The only crop to rival them here is the green beans, which lack the romance.

The cyclamen are opening which promises an extended delight. The lilies are on their last legs – another torrential rain will spell the end of the auratums but within a few weeks, the autumn bulbs will be starting. That at least is some consolation for a truly disappointing summer.

Our old man pines, Pinus radiata, are large trees after 130 years